But they weren’t part of the new wave inspired by Anchor, then New Albion.

Look forward to having this discussion with you sometime at a bar. Not sure how much arguing there would be.

Not saying I agree with that or some other definitions of the Brewers Association but part of being a beer fan seems to be everyone gets their own definitions of beer styles and brewery size/type designations (or, at least, a good portion of us reject the “guidelines” of the BA, BJCP and the various beer websites.

Me, I still bristle at someone writing something like “…the US was covered with microbreweries in the 19th century…”, since I say that term can’t really be anachronistically used for “pre-New Albion” breweries. But, it’s good to have something to argue about at the bar if one’s not into sports…

Boulder, DeBakker, New Albion, River City and Sierra-Nevada are the most obvious ones- listed in 1981 Brewers Digest Annual, published in Jan. 1981, so they were all around if not fully opened in 1980.

Tho’, for me, it’s pre-Prohibition roots puts Anchor in it’s own catagory but, OK, that’d make 6. I think that Alaskan brewery owned by Germans, Prinz Brau, *might* still have been open in ’80 but it, too, wasn’t quite “craft” (and was too big even then for the “microbrewery” designation).

But to the author’s credit, because I read the article through (well, mostly), he follows up with, “A quarter-century later, there are over 1,300. In some cases, they’ve recaptured regional loyalties. “

OTOH, his big finish falls pretty flat, “Now that I was done writing about beer, I went around the corner to the Lighthouse, to watch the All-Star Game and drink … an Old Style.

Hey, some towns have held on to their swill.”

Someone needs to tell him that Old Style isn’t even brewed in LaCrosse anymore.

“In 1980, America had eight craft breweries.” Uh, yeah… and almost 30 years later and into a new century?

Yike — sudden epiphany with that one — I wasn’t old enough to drink in my state in 1980!